Co-Governing Care in Astoria, Queens: The Role and Responsibility of the City in Supporting Community-Led Solidarity Networks

Abstract

In the spring of 2020, as COVID-19 spread across New York City and the United States, an inadequate government response and an overburdened social safety net left millions facing unemployment, eviction, and food insecurity with limited institutional support. Yet alongside these systemic failures, mass acts of solidarity emerged, as unprecedented numbers of people mobilized mutual aid eff orts to help their neighbors survive. While many mutual aid groups have since disbanded or experienced burnout, others have sustained the work, helping to establish alternative infrastructures of collective care. Taking Astoria, Queens as a case, this thesis examines the political lessons that have emerged in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on what it takes to sustain community-led solidarity networks and considering City’s role and responsibility in supporting urban infrastructures of care more broadly. To conceptualize this relationship between local community eff orts and the City, I further consider the possibilities of co-governance as a framework for community care. This research utilizes a community-centered, relational, qualitative approach that draws on oral history and ethnographic traditions, including thematic analysis of key informant interviews, document review, and participant observation. Tracing the trajectory of mutual aid and other community-led eff orts in Astoria and exploring the possibilities and challenges of collaborative governance, this research imagines how planning, policy, and governance strategies in New York City can deepen collective capacity, foster resilience, and advance more just and caring urban futures.